I want to develop a passive income stream in the next 4 years, nothing grand, maybe an extra 500-1000 dollars a month, but I’m not sure how to go about it so I was wondering if you had any tips. I’m so-so as a writer, and am currently finishing up my second book (just write as a hobby), and in the past made about 30-50 dollars an hour as a free lance writer but that was a couple of years back, it was only for about 10-20 hours a month, and the gig just dried up. I just got particularly lucky with that. I’ve tried online poker as a means in the past, and which I learned A) was not passive income but hard work and B) I have an addictive personality which resulted in me losing the 4g I earned in 6 weeks over the span of 72 hours so that’s out of the picture. I also partook in some illegal selling of things when I was younger, but being a little older and wiser the risk-reward ratio for possibly ending up in Jail just doesn’t match up. I tried making three businesses (dog walking, house cleaning, and personal assistant) and while those all were succesful to varying degrees and earned me about 15-25 dollars an hour, they weren’t mobile and quiet honestly I don’t have the time to be a full time dog walker or run a house cleaning operation seeing as I’ll be in school, work, and athletics.

In addition to opening a brokerage account, you can also invest in peer-to-peer lending firms like Lending Club. I’ve been using Lending Club for a few years, and my net annualized return was 6.02% percent last year. Picking the right investments is easy since the platform offers automatic investing, but you can also pick your own notes if you're brave and want to learn the best ways to leverage the Lending Club platform.

Indoor air pollution resulting from the use of solid fuels [by poorer segments of society] is a major killer. It claims the lives of 1.5 million people each year, more than half of them below the age of five: that is 4000 deaths a day. To put this number in context, it exceeds total deaths from malaria and rivals the number of deaths from tuberculosis.Source 15

An obvious example is over exposure to bank stocks, which have been excellent investments for over a century. Though a foundation of most portfolios, bank stocks do involve more risk at certain stages of the economic cycle than many realise. Being less exposed to bank shares in the last few months could have preserved some capital. So, a more diversified approach can help mitigate some of these risks.